


A Train Platform, Poetry and a Solitary Howl

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5941849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Observations of a stranger</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Train Platform, Poetry and a Solitary Howl

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

Jonathon watched the clock at the train station. Ten Fifty Three. The train wasn't arriving till ten past eleven. Why hadn't he listened to her? Ah, that's right, he knew best, he had let her go. Of course, if he had listened he wouldn't be needing this late night train ride to his cold flat where it's sole occupant, a cat named Derrick, would treat him with a stunning indifference.

The wind came up and he drew his thick coat tighter around him. There were few figures on the platform this cold winter night. A conductor holding a cup of tea to warm his hands, an older woman who was doing her best to avoid notice and a couple of young men holding on to each other and swaying slightly, obviously returning from a night at the local pub.

Then Jonathon noticed a further figure, an older man who every so often cast his eyes towards the full moon. He walked down the platform with an understated elegance and came to lean on the wall not far from Jonathon. He was tall, with dark features and pale blue eyes and wore a long black coat, jeans and dark jersey. He took a packet of cigarettes and lighter from the deep pockets of his coat and lit one, the flame from the lighter briefly lighting up his features, and then returned the packet and lighter to the pocket. Jonathon didn't know what is was, but his eyes kept returning to the man, there was just something about him that seemed not quite right, like he didn't quite belong on a train platform in downtown London, almost like he didn't quite belong in this world.

The man caught Jonathon looking one time and smiled. `Something the matter?' He asked. Even the soft tones of his voice disrupting the deep silence of the platform's surroundings.

Jonathon looked away self-consciously, `No, sorry.' He mumbled.

The man just smiled. `I get that a lot.' He took a drag on his cigarette.

Jonathon couldn't help himself. `Get what?'

`The looks, the muttering. People pretending they weren't looking at me oddly.' The smile never left the man's face. `Quite entertaining really.'

`Entertaining?'

`Sure. Call it the study of human behaviour. Human Nature, even. I happen to find it entertaining.'

Jonathon just smiled at the man, and started staring at the concrete by his feet. There was just something about him that fascinated Jonathon, but at the same time also frightened him. He seemed talkative and friendly enough, but you could meet some strange people in train stations. For he all knew he could be carrying a deadly weapon under his coat, a machete or something, stranger things had happened. He recalled one day last September when he was sure he had seen a dark haired girl with an owl in a cage disappear into a brick wall. Mind you, this had been before he had his morning coffee, and it was not unusual for Jonathon to see a whole heap of weird things before his coffee in the morning.

He found himself glancing over at the man again. He seemed to have his eyes fixed on the moon again, as if by gazing at it he was communing with it in some sort of otherworldly connection. He also fiddled with a platinum band on his left hand, slowly twisting it around his finger, running the fingers of his right hand over it's surface.

The man looked up at him again. `Do you have someone you care for deeply? More than you've ever cared for anyone else?' For the first time Jonathon truly noticed the man's eyes, they seemed to hold within them an infinite sadness, a sadness he hadn't seen when he had been confronted with them before.

The question took Jonathon off guard but he thought and his mind turned to her, and her touch, and smell.

`Yes' he admitted softly, and a little hesitantly, not sure where this was going.

`One piece of advice, never let them go, because for what ever reason you may have, when you look back on it you'll regret it, and by the time you realize that, they may be gone far beyond your reach.' The man spoke in a soft voice, but one that betrayed deep levels of emotion.

Jonathon wasn't quite sure what to say, but just nodded solemnly.

Then the man quietly recited something that Jonathon vaguely remembered reading, possibly by Thomas, or Byron, or was it Auden? One of those famous poets, he spoke in the same tone as before, but with a lyric lilt.

`He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.'

He looked up at Jonathon after reciting this, and smiled. `He was everything to me, and now he's gone, gone forever, and I never got to tell him sorry. Sorry for suspecting him, sorry for letting him go when we needed each other most. Sorry for James and Lily. Sorry for everything.'

Just then, the train pulled up to the platform. Jonathon walked away from the man on the platform thinking that the man had quite seriously lost the plot, and treating him as just another one of those homeless people, a rather well-dressed homeless person in this case, who wandered train stations striking up random conversations. He got on the train, along with the two drunken louts and the mysterious woman.

He sat in a window seat looking back out over the platform. The man still stood there, gazing at the moon again, but then he seemed to disappear.

Jonathon shook his head, surely he was seeing things, but when he looked again, no man stood against the wall, but he could vaguely see a large black dog padding off in the distance, stopping momentarily to howl at the moon, a desolate howl, and then continuing along the platform.

Later he would think that his mind had created the image on reflection of how badly he had treated her, and how he had let her go, something he had rectified the next day, but there was always a small doubt in his mind, and the memory of the black dog's solitary howl, and the stranger's lilting verse.


End file.
